A Dover city councilwoman who ran for re-election as an independent after losing her party's support for re-election could be in trouble if judges continue to enforce New Jersey's sore loser law.

Karol Ruiz tried to toe the Democratic line earlier this year—before U.S. District Judge Zahid Quariashi ordered block ballots for the June 4 primary—but lost the Democratic local convention in March by a vote of 16 to 5 to Debora Acevedo.

Instead of running in the primary against Acevedo, an ally of Mayor James P. Dodd, Ruiz filed to run as an independent.

In similar circumstances, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faces a lawsuit claiming that his previous bid for the Democratic nomination bars him from running in the general election. A Supreme Court judge has scheduled a hearing on Kennedy's candidacy for July 17.

“New Jersey courts have repeatedly upheld the Sore Loser Law in recent years to bar people from running as independents, even if they were not on the ballot in the primary election itself,” said Salmon, a prominent election lawyer and Democrat who filed the lawsuit to remove Kennedy from the ballot.

Dodd thinks Ruiz should drop out of the race.

“It is obvious to me, as a believer in the rule of law, that Ruiz intended to run in the Democratic primary and only dropped out when she decided she was unlikely to win,” Dodd told the New Jersey Globe. “Under the Sore Loser Law, Ms. Ruiz should follow the law and not run in the general election. I cannot comment further on what legal action might be taken should she refuse to do what is right for her constituents.”

Ruiz did not immediately respond to a text message and did not answer her cellphone.

Last September, just days before ballots were to be printed, a South Jersey judge kicked Penns Grove's independent mayor, LaDaena Thomas, off last year's general election ballot. A person unaffiliated with Thomas' campaign used Facebook to urge voters to write in Thomas in the Democratic primary. Although the mayor wasn't canvassing for votes in her first term, she implied she was on Facebook, and that was enough for Judge Benjamin Morgan to remove her from the ballot. Salmon worked that case.

In 2022, a Monmouth County judge ruled that an unsuccessful candidate could not run as an independent in a Republican primary in Colts Neck.

In 2018, after an East Rutherford alderman who lost the Republican primary was offered an open seat on the Democratic ticket, Judge Estela De La Cruz ruled that the Loser Law applied and did not allow Jeffrey Lahullier to run as a Democrat. (The following year, Lahullier ran for mayor as a Democrat and won.)

The Board of Elections has rejected a nomination petition filed by Peter Vallorosi, who sought to run for the U.S. Senate as an independent after previously running as a Republican. He had filed in the Republican primary but withdrew his application when it became clear he did not have enough signatures on his nomination petition to withstand a challenge.

Kennedy filed in May to get on the November general election ballot, but New Jersey will not certify his candidacy after the July 29 filing deadline.